Conceptualizing Experience: A Tourist Based Approach

Abstract

Despite considerable research on the topic of ‘tourist experience’, its contribution to tourism theory and its exploitation for the purpose of creating practical benefits for marketing practices, remain unclear. The present study reviews the existing literature and then presents a novel approach to interpreting experience in tourism by: (a) integrating the space and time dimensions into the ‘tourist experience’ concept, thereby shedding light on its nature and significance; and (b) examining tourists' spontaneous annotations on their travel experiences. Marketing implication and suggestions are provided for the benefit of tourism practitioners.